Some observers were quick to point to the vote as
evidence of the Nation Rifle Association’s, or NRA’s, enduring power, but there
are several reasons to believe that the gun lobby’s dominance is in jeopardy
and that its victory in the Senate may have been a pyrrhic one. Below are nine
reasons why progress on stronger gun laws is, in fact, still within reach.
1. Swing-state momentum
In April 2008 presidential candidates Barack Obama
and Hillary Clinton, then Democratic senators of Chicago and New York,
respectively, were in a month-long pitched battle to win the Pennsylvania
primary. The contest played out as Sen. Obama’s remarks at a San Francisco
fundraising event regarding “clinging to guns and religion” became public. The
remarks set off a firestorm and sent both candidates into a mode of proving
their pro-gun bona fides in the run-up to the Pennsylvania primary. The Clinton
campaign even circulated mail pieces asking, “Where does Barack Obama really
stand on guns?” and suggesting that he favored a total ban on handguns. While
Pennsylvania does have the second-largest concentration of NRA members of any
state, it was odd to see candidates in a Democratic primary going so far to
stress their pro-gun positions in a state that suffers high rates of gun crime.
Around the same time in early 2008, a small group of leading
gun-violence-prevention advocates and funders developed a strategy to focus resources
on a handful of key “purple” states, with three states at the top of the list:
Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Virginia. What followed was a concerted effort to
build coalitions of mayors and law enforcement, strengthen the voices of
gun-violence survivors, develop in-state gun-violence-prevention organizations,
and contest elections. The fruit of that strategy is evident today.
The bottom line: With advocates for stronger gun
laws gaining ground in Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Virginia, the prospects nationally
are bright.
2. Evolving demographics
Our country is undergoing a culture shift on guns.
While the number of guns in circulation in the country has continued to rise,
the percentage of households that own guns has been steadily declining for the past
three decades, reaching a low of 34 percent in 2012, down from an average of 50
percent in the 1970s. Fewer Americans own guns, but the ones who do are likely
to own more guns than ever. Driving this trend are declining gun-ownership
rates among young people. Data from the General Social Survey, a public-opinion
survey conducted every two years, found that household gun-ownership rates
among people under 30 fell to 23 percent in 2012. This is down from a high of
47 percent in the 1970s.
Not only are fewer young people choosing to own guns
than in previous generations, but they are also expressing evolving views on
the role of guns in American culture. An April 2013 poll commissioned by the
Center for American Progress, Campus Progress, and Mayors Against Illegal Guns
and conducted by Democratic pollster Mike Bocian and Republican pollster Bob
Carpenter reveals that young Americans have increasing concerns about the
widespread presence of guns in society. Seventy percent of respondents under
the age of 30 agreed that “the gun culture in our society has gotten out of
control,” and 52 percent said that they feel safer in communities with fewer
guns, with only 32 percent holding the opposite view. Part of this concern
about guns may come from personal experience with gun violence. Thirty percent
of people under the age of 30 reported having been personally affected or
knowing someone who has been affected by gun violence, and 60 percent expressed
concern that gun violence may affect them or their communities in the future.
These numbers were even higher among young African Americans, Latinos, and
Asian Americans: Collectively, 73 percent reported worrying about being
personally affected by gun violence in the future.
These views about, as well as the experience of, the
gun culture among younger Americans appear to translate into higher support for
specific policies. The Bocian and Carpenter poll shows that while background
checks for all gun sales are popular among Americans over the age of 30—86
percent said that they support such a law—it is even more popular among
Americans aged 18 to 29, with 92 percent saying that they support the measure.
3. A new center of gravity
Two weeks ago Mayors Against Illegal Guns celebrated
its seventh birthday. On April 25, 2006, 15 mayors from across the
country—Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike—gathered to discuss how
they could work together to address the issue of gun violence in their
communities. As mayors, they were the elected officials who the public held responsible
for crime, and as mayors, they were expected to solve problems rather than just
endlessly debate them. That day those 15 mayors, led by New York City Mayor
Michael Bloomberg—now an independent but then a Republican—and Boston Mayor Tom
Menino (D), formed a coalition focused on sharing best practices to combat gun
crime and collectively advocating for action in Washington. Seven years later
Mayors Against Illegal Guns has grown to almost 1,000 mayors with 1.5 million
grassroots supporters, and today it represents the leading organization in the
fight for stronger gun laws.
Likewise, survivors of gun violence have become far more organized. Former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ) and her husband Mark Kelly formed Americans for Responsible Solutions to advocate for stronger gun laws and contest the 2014 elections. And in the wake of Newtown, affected families have organized, come together, and been among the most effective advocates for stronger gun laws in the last several months.
This latest wave of organizational development
follows a previous effort launched in 2000 by Americans for Gun Safety and
other groups to gain traction on gun issues by reframing the issue as one of
gun safety rather than gun control. These efforts made some headway in
redefining the rhetoric of the gun debate, but the shift in message and policy
objectives was not matched by a massive organizing campaign to form a new
bulwark of advocates for stronger gun laws.
The work of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Americans
for Responsible Solutions, and others is an attempt to once again redefine the
issue. The mayors and other rising advocates have come to focus not on banning
particular kinds of guns but on measures such as comprehensive background
checks, which are designed to keep all guns out of the hands of criminals and
other dangerous people. This approach, designed to both respect the rights of
responsible gun owners and crack down on criminal access to firearms, has found
broad public support. Even more important than this more focused set of policy
objectives, the mayors’ group and the other new advocates are bringing
organization, sophisticated advocacy, grassroots activity, and financial
backing to the issue.
4. Widening divide between the NRA leadership and
public opinion— even among gun owners
It has never been clearer that the NRA leadership
does not represent the opinion of most Americans—or even most gun owners. While
the NRA leadership opposes any expansion in gun background checks, polls show
that between 80 percent and 90 percent of Americans support expanded background
checks. Even gun owners, the constituency that the NRA claims to speak for,
overwhelmingly support expanded background checks. And remarkably, NRA members
themselves support expanding background checks to ensure that criminals can’t
easily buy guns. A poll by Republican pollster Frank Luntz last summer found
that 74 percent of NRA members support background checks for all gun sales. A
similar CBS News/New York Times poll, conducted in January soon after the Sandy
Hook shooting, found that 85 percent of NRA house- holds supported background
checks on all gun sales.
This disconnect between the extreme positions taken
by the NRA leadership and the desires of a vast majority of Americans—including
gun owners—to enact common- sense gun-law reforms cannot be sustained. The NRA
leadership’s intransigence on issues such as expanded gun background checks has
alienated it not only from most Americans but also from increasing numbers of
gun owners. A Gallup poll conducted in December 2012 bears this out. Forty-nine
percent of gun owners said that the NRA represented their views on guns only
“sometimes” or “never.”
5. The NRA’s path not followed
Once upon a time the NRA was a sportsmen’s
organization that focused on marksmanship and hunting and had plans to move its
headquarters to Colorado Springs to enhance its focus on recreational shooting
activities. But an internal coup at the NRA’s annual meeting in Cincinnati in
1977 resulted in the organization’s leadership being taken over by a group of
hardliners focused on establishing it as a premier ideological advocacy group
in Washington.
Even after this transformation following what became
known as the Cincinnati Revolt, the NRA would still take an occasional moderate
position on sensible proposals to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.
Following the Columbine High School shooting, for example, the NRA supported
requiring background checks at gun shows, going as far as to release a media
campaign in support of the proposal titled “Be Reasonable.” In the wake of
Columbine, the NRA stated its support for “absolutely gun-free, zero-tolerance,
totally safe schools.” But in the wake of Newtown, by contrast, a proposal to
put more guns in schools was the centerpiece of the NRA’s response.
In recent years the NRA has taken an increasingly
extreme position on every gun policy issue and even on matters that have only a
tangential relationship to guns. For the first time in its history, for
example, the NRA scored votes on Supreme Court nominees for the nominations of
Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. This action put Democratic senators in an
impossible position: maintain a perfect record with the gun lobby or abandon a
Supreme Court nominee on what is one of the most important votes a senator ever
takes. In scoring the nominees, the NRA likely appealed to a base of members
who identify with the Tea Party, but it alienated Democrats, independents, and
some Republicans who thought that Sotomayor and Kagan were well-qualified
nominees.
Scoring the Supreme Court votes for the first time
in its history also created a way for the NRA to avoid endorsing Democrats such
as Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) in 2010 by factoring nongun-related votes into NRA
ratings, which had the effect of lowering ratings for many Democrats. Sen. Reid
has a long history of supporting gun rights, and he shepherded gun-lobby
priority legislation such as the right to carry guns in national parks through
a Senate dominated by Democrats. But with the new, more ideologically driven
NRA leadership and its all-or-nothing approach, the NRA sat on the sidelines as
Sen. Reid faced a tight election in 2010 with Republican Senate nominee Sharron
Angle.
While not endorsing Sen. Reid may have appealed to a
base of NRA members who dislike the senator for reasons that have nothing to do
with guns, such as his support for Obamacare, it also sent a message to
Democrats, independents, and independent-minded Republicans who had been
supportive of gun rights: The NRA’s decision making is now being driven by the
prerogatives of a broader ideological agenda that in some cases has nothing to
do with guns.
Two weeks ago Sen. Reid gave his response to the NRA
leaders: If it’s all or nothing, then you’ll get nothing. The Senate majority
leader voted not only for expanded back- ground checks but also supported bans
on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, and he reversed his 2009
position supporting a measure that would have gutted state laws on concealed
gun carrying. Likewise, seven other NRA A-rated senators—Sens. Bob Casey
(D-PA); Joe Donnelly (D-IN); Martin Heinrich (D-NM); Joe Manchin (D-WV); John
Tester (D-MT); Pat Toomey (R-PA); and Mark Warner (D-VA)— parted ways with the
NRA leadership on the background-check vote.
6. Democrats and progressives are re-engaged
In 1993 and 1994 Congress passed the Brady Handgun
Violence Prevention Act and the assault-weapons ban. Later in 1994, however,
Democrats lost both houses of Congress. This defeat, along with the notion that
it was tightly tied to gun politics, gave rise to the myth of the NRA’s
electoral omnipotence. There were some races that year where guns plausibly
played a role, such as Democratic Rep. Jack Brooks’s loss in Texas. But there
were many other races, such as the defeat of House Speaker Tom Foley (D-WA),
where claims about the impact of the gun issue are demonstrably false.
Nevertheless, the myth of Democratic vulnerability on guns took hold.
In the wake of 1994, a sort of “Stockholm
syndrome”—the condition associated with kidnapping victims who begin to
empathize with their kidnappers—overtook the Democratic Party. For almost two
decades the Washington orthodoxy, even among Democrats, has been that it is
best to avoid the gun issue, no matter how grievous the public policy
implications of playing politically dead are or how extreme the NRA’s positions
are. The passivity of the abused has encouraged only abuse from the abuser.
That orthodoxy of avoiding guns has remained
remarkably durable among Democratic leaders in Washington. In recent years,
however, cracks have begun to emerge, and Newtown broke it apart. With the
leadership of President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Reid, and House
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Democrats once again made fighting gun
crime and reducing gun violence a central tenet of the party.
Though four Senate Democrats voted against
background checks two weeks ago, that vote will not be without consequences. As
former White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley’s Washington Post column several
days after the background-check vote portends, there will now be a price for
breaking ranks on guns.
7. Recent election results
If the conventional wisdom has been that the NRA is
an almighty juggernaut that cannot be defeated when it decides to spend money
on a campaign, that wisdom failed spectacularly in the 2012 elections—a
campaign season in which the NRA spent more than $17 million. The Sunlight
Foundation, an organization that aims to increase transparency and
accountability in Washington, looked at the return on investment of the
independent expenditures of all major outside groups in the 2012 election by
evaluating what percentage of the dollars spent aided the candidates who won.
The foundation determined that no group performed worse than the NRA Political Victory
Fund, the NRA’s political action committee, which saw a less than 1 percent
return on investment. More than 99 percent of the dollars that the NRA spent
went to losing campaigns. Furthermore, it’s hard to point to any clear example
of how the NRA helped a current member of Congress win any race that was
defined by the gun issue in any recent election.
In contrast, advocates for stronger gun laws have
recently proven to be extremely effective at influencing key congressional
races. In 2012 pro-gun Rep. Joe Baca (D-CA) learned the hard way what Rep.
Keith Fimian learned in Virginia in 2010: taking the extreme positions of the
NRA leadership can have significant consequences for an election in a
competitive district. More than $3 million in independent expenditures by a
Bloomberg-funded super PAC swung an election that then-Rep. Baca entered
heavily favored to win. Likewise, in an Illinois special election this
February, Democratic candidate Robin Kelly defeated the front runner, former
Rep. Debbie Halvorson (D-IL), with the support of a variety of groups urging
tighter gun laws.
8. Closing the intensity gap
For decades the conventional wisdom has been that
although more Americans may support strengthening gun laws than weakening gun
laws, gun-rights advocates hold their views more intensely. For gun-rights
advocates, the thinking holds that the issue is often a basis for making a
phone call to their elected representatives, contributing money to campaigns,
or deciding who to vote for, while those on the other side are rarely so
motivated. This description has perhaps been apt in the past, but there is
substantial evidence that the intensity gap has closed.
A series of polls have measured the public’s
reaction to the recent background-check vote. A Fox News poll conducted days
after the vote, for example, showed that three times as many Americans—68
percent—said that they were likely to support a candidate who voted for
expanded background checks, as opposed to the 23 percent who said that they
were likely to support a candidate who opposed expanded background checks.
Polling on specific senators corroborates this picture:
-In the wake of the background-check vote in New
Hampshire, Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte’s approval rating dropped 15 points
below the level it was at last fall. Fifty percent of New Hampshire residents
reported that Sen. Ayotte’s background-check position made them less likely to
support her, and only 23 percent said that her posi- tion earned her greater
support.
-In Pennsylvania Sen. Toomey’s approval rating rose
to its highest levels ever after his leadership on the background-check
amendment. His support among Democrats and independents is higher, and his
support among Republicans is unchanged.
-Other opponents of background checks, such as Sens.
Mark Begich (D-AK), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Dean Heller (R-NV), Lisa Murkowksi
(R-AK), and Rob Portman (R-OH), have all seen declines in public support in the
wake of the vote.
The polling suggests that the long-held conventional
wisdom about the intensity of support on gun issues is no longer valid.
9. The numbers
The remarkable disjunction between the policies—or
lack thereof—that we have in place to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous
people and the scale of gun violence in the United States is evidence of the
gun lobby’s past success. But it is also evidence of its present vulnerability.
The scale of gun violence—not just mass shootings
but the everyday gun massacres that occur across big cities and small towns all
over the country—is not abating. It is a problem that is distinct to the United
States. It is a problem that is incontrovertibly linked to weak laws that give
criminals and other dangerous people easy access to guns. It is a problem that
cries out for action.
The following numbers tell the tale:
-33: The average number of people murdered with a
gun in the United States every day.
-283: The average number of people shot in the
United States every day.
-40: The average number of children and teenagers
shot in the United States every day.
-10 times higher: The accidental-firearms death rate
among children in the United States compared to other high-income countries.
-31,000: The average number of homicides, suicides,
and fatal accidents involving firearms in the United States every year.
-6.9 times higher: The homicide rate of the United
States compared to 22 high-income countries.
-85 percent: The percentage of attempted suicides
with a gun in the United States that result in fatalities.
-8 times higher: The firearm suicide rate among
children in the United States compared to other high-income countries.
-500 percent: The percentage that the risk of
homicide increases when a gun is present in a domestic-violence situation.
-57 percent: The percentage of mass shootings that
began with the targeting of a girlfriend, spouse, or former intimate partner.
-63: The number of U.S. law-enforcement officers
killed with firearms in 2011.
-6.6 million: The estimated number of guns sold each
year in the United States without a background check.
-80 percent: The percentage of convicted criminals
who acquired the guns used in their crimes through a private transfer.
-90 seconds: The amount of time it takes to complete
91 percent of background checks.
-38 percent lower: The number of women killed with a
firearm by an intimate partner in states that require background checks for all
handgun sales, compared to states that do not require such background checks.
-2.5 times higher: The average export rate of crime
guns in states that do not require background checks for all handgun sales at
gun shows, compared to states that do require such background checks.
Conclusion:
The Senate vote on April 17, 2013, was only the
first round in the newly invigorated movement to enact common-sense legislation
to reduce gun violence in our country. And while a moderate bipartisan proposal
to expand background checks failed to gain the 60 votes necessary to overcome a
filibuster, a majority of senators voted in favor of this legislation, which
has overwhelming public support in all corners of the country.
As President Obama said in his statement after the
vote, “We can still bring about meaningful changes that reduce gun violence, so
long as the American people don’t give up on it.” There are many reasons to be
hopeful that with strong leadership in the White House, courageous lawmakers in
Congress, well-organized and passionate grassroots advocates, and overwhelming
public support, we will succeed in enacting measures to prevent gun violence
and make all of our communities safer.
About the authors: Arkadi Gerney is a Senior Fellow
at the Center for American Progress. Chelsea Parsons is Associate Director for
Crime and Firearms Policy at the Center.
This article was published by the Center for
American Progress.
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